Accreditation Virtual Site Visit

Today is the second and last day of our accreditation visit--the AVMA is doing a site visit of our Vet Tech program.  Because of the pandemic, it's a virtual visit.  In some ways, it's like a series of Zoom meetings.  But it's that way because we did so much work beforehand.  I say "we," but others have done far more than I have.

We have a Google Drive where much of the visit has already taken place.  We've uploaded loads and loads of documents--the kinds of documents that would be in big binders for an in-person visit.  We've done video tours of the facilities.  We've made videos of equipment, videos of field trips, videos of drug labels, all sorts of videos.

The Zoom meetings will be familiar to those of us who have done accreditation visits.  The visiting team has met with the Program Director and the faculty, both alone and together.  The visiting team has had a session with students.  Today the team meets with various parts of administration, from Admissions to the Librarian to Financial Aid.

In some ways, it's less stress.  We don't have to get food for the team or figure out where they should meet when they're on campus.  But there's stress nonetheless.  My meeting this morning is at 7:30 a.m.  I am leaving at 6:30, so that if I get to the office to find out that the internet is down, I have time to rush back home.  But I'm hoping that my office location will be online.  My home internet has become increasingly unreliable--or is it my computer that's unreliable?  Insert a heavy sigh here.

The stress is also strange in this way:  I have felt tense all week.  With an in-person visit, everyone on campus would remember that the visit was happening and understand the pressure.  With an online visit, it's easy to forget that the visit is happening, if you're not in the Zoom meeting, and you're not part of the team in charge of the campus logistics (me and the Program Director and the faculty).

I'll be interested to see if we keep online accreditation visits when it's safe to assemble in person again.  In some ways, being online is easier on the visiting team:  no airline travel, no hotels, and perhaps a more leisurely pace.  But I won't be surprised if accrediting bodies go back to in-person visits.  In some ways, it's such a different experience to assess what's happening in a school when one is there, when the accreditation experience is less curated.

Or is it?  Maybe it's more like the online classes that I teach.  It's a very different class, the online class and the in-person class--and yet, the essentials remain in each delivery modality.  Maybe we will determine, in accreditation visits as with classes, that each delivery system has its advantages and its disadvantages.